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Resources updated between Monday, September 08, 2014 and Sunday, September 14, 2014

September 14, 2014

Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, was arrested and taken to Evin jail a few days after attempting to watch a volleyball match between Iran and Italy on June 20

"A British woman has been in an Iranian prison for more than two months for trying to watch a men's volleyball match.

Ghoncheh Ghavami, 25, was arrested along with more than a dozen women as they tried to enter a stadium where the Iranian national men's team was playing Italy on 20 June.

She was released from custody but when she went back to collect her belongings days later, she was arrested a second time and transferred to Tehran's notorious Evin jail, which is known for holding political prisoners and journalists.

Miss Ghavami's brother, 28-year-old Iman Ghavami, said she rang her family in tears saying she had been put in solitary confinement for 41 days."

"You've gotta love Anne Bayefsky. Don't know her? Well she's a Canadian unlikely to ever get an Order of Canada. Those go to chaps like William Schabas, OC, a fellow Canadian. Both Anne and William speak about human rights, Israel and the United Nations. The reason Anne hasn't got an OC might be for her plain speaking: 'Why couldn't the UN . . . sponsor a conference on combating global anti-Semitism?' she asked this week in a jammed meeting room in the United Nations. 'Because,' she told the audience, 'the United Nations itself is the leading global purveyor of anti-Semitism.' As for William, he's a hired hand of the UN's legal pogrom demonizing Israel. You can take a boy like William and make him a human rights industry pro, but you can't take the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) out of the boy..."

Six Iranians are facing trial for dancing in a YouTube version of Pharrell Williams song Happy.

"The trial against six young Iranians who danced in a YouTube version of Pharrell Williams' viral song Happy has started in Tehran.

The three men and three women, who have an average age of 25, were arrested in May, as police accused them of helping make an 'obscene video clip that offended the public morals' and later released on bail...

The six friends are facing a series of charges including having sex outside marriage, posting on 'the vulgar YouTube channel', failing to observe proper Islamic dress, dancing, and having contacts with foreign television networks, an allegation that could entail the more serious offence of spying, The Times reported."

According to the UN human rights chief, Israel and the United States are two out of the fifteen worst places in the world when it comes to human rights.

On September 8, 2014, the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein of Jordan, made his very first statement at the opening of the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva. In his opening remarks he selected specific states to criticize, among them the democratic states of Israel and the United States.

Al Hussein replaces South African, Navi Pillay, best known for her pathological anti-Israel and anti-American bias throughout her tenure.

Al Hussein also has a history of anti-Israel bias. He represented Jordan before the International Court of Justice when it considered the legality of Israel's security fence in 2004. The case was a farcical "legal" exercise that answered a "question" posed by the General Assembly. The Assembly had already decided the illegality of "the Wall" and gave the Court the information to "prove" the foregone conclusion. During his appearance Al-Hussein said that Israeli "practices" were "no less horrific" than suicide-bombing.

The biography of al-Hussein distributed by the UN upon his appointment, highlights that he is a member of the advisory committee to "The Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation." The output of this Institute ought to raise alarm bells on the thinking of al-Hussein. According to the Institute's website,"The Advisory Board provides guidance and oversight in the selection and implementation of IHJR projects." A 2012 project, entitled "Two Sides of the Coin: Independence and Nakba 1948," purports to provide an historical account of the creation of Israel from the perspectives of Israeli and Palestinian "narratives." It includes this take on the Jewish problem: "The Zionist movement supported the British and their allies, while the Mufti supported the German-Italian axis, which meant the Jews were in better relations at the end of the war with Britain and their allies in the West than the Arabs were."

It also includes:
1948 Narrative
"Palestinians feel that they are paying for the European Jewish Holocaust rather than those responsible. The Jewish-Israeli perspective of the War of Independence is current rather than historical. It is perceived as an act of historical justice and the birth of a nation; therefore, it must be pure and untainted to ensure the state's legitimacy...The Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 is viewed by Palestinians as the beginning of Zionist aggression

From the Holocaust to the Partition of Palestine, 1945-1947
...Holocaust...survivors had nowhere else to go ...The Palestinians thought of themselves as the indigenous community

Unfortunately, All-Hussein chose to adopt an anti-Israel tone immediately upon assuming the supposedly independent role of High Commissioner. He mentioned only 15 countries (including the European Union) in his opening speech and Israel was number three on his list. There was no mention of notorious human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia, Iran, China or Cuba.

Among other things, he slammed Israel for "persistent discrimination and impunity" and "the wide range of daily human rights infringements." Regarding the 2014 war in Gaza he blamed Israel for the allegedly spontaneous "outbreak" - not Hamas kidnappings and rockets directed at Israeli civilians: "The most recent outbreak of armed conflict has had a particularly devastating toll in death, suffering and destruction, compounding what was an already precarious situation due to the blockade imposed by Israel in 2007." Al Hussein didn't even mention Hamas firing rockets into Israel or the 32 terror tunnels built by Hamas for the sole purpose of killing Jews.

During the same speech, the new human rights chief said he was concerned about human rights violations by the United States lecturing: "I am also concerned by reports of detention in the United States of America of some of the more than 50,000 unaccompanied children who have arrived there since October 2013. ...The treatment of non-nationals must observe the minimum standards set by international law. Human rights are not reserved for citizens only, or for people with visas....A tendency to promote law enforcement and security paradigms at the expense of human rights frameworks dehumanises irregular migrants, enabling a climate of violence against them and further depriving them of the full protection of the law."

The U.S. taking care of individuals wanting to come to the U.S.was evidently more important than the abysmal treatment of hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers in countries like Bangladesh (including 178,000 Rohingyas), China (including 40,000 North Koreans), Sudan (including 160,000 from Eritrea, Ethiopia, DRC, Chad and South Sudan) and Malaysia (including 141,000 from Myanmar).